Sienna POV: They sold me for ten million dollars. One night with a stranger. And my father signed the check. "The doctor's done, Mom. She's clean. Untouched. Exactly what they asked for." My stepsister's voice floated somewhere above me, bright and bored, the way she talked about handbags. "Thank God." My stepmother laughed. "Twenty-two years of feeding that girl, and she finally pays her way. Ten million dollars from Thorne Group. Hart Hockey is saved." Ten million? Saved? I forced my eyes open. The room swam. Exposed beams. A stone fireplace. A bearskin rug under my cheek. Black Ridge Lodge. The Hart family cabin in the White Mountains. We had driven up this afternoon for "a family weekend." Monica had handed me a cup of cocoa. That was the last thing I remembered. Monica Hart sat on the leather sofa with her legs crossed, a glass of red wine dangling from her manicured fingers. Brielle lounged next to her, scrolling on her phone. "What... did you do to me?" My tongue felt like wet sand. "Oh, sweetheart." Monica leaned forward and smiled. "Don't look at me like that. A very, very rich man is paying ten million dollars for one night with you. He asked for a virgin with your blood type. Golden blood, the doctors call it. Rh-null. Fewer than fifty people on earth have it." She shrugged. "Don't ask me why. Rich men have strange tastes." "Dad..." I tried to push myself up. My arms gave out. "Dad would never..." Brielle snorted. "Dad planned it, genius. He's the one who found the buyer. You really thought he loved you? He kept you around because—" "Brielle." Monica's voice snapped like a whip. "Enough." She waved a hand. Two men in black stepped out of the shadows and hauled me up by my arms. "Clean her up and put her in the master bedroom," Monica said. "And give her the rest of the bottle. The client is important. If she screams and ruins his mood, it's your heads." Something cold and bitter poured down my throat. I choked. I gagged. It didn't matter. Within two minutes, my legs were gone. Within five, I couldn't even scream. I tried, and what came out of me was a soft, broken sound I didn't recognize. They threw me onto a bed in the dark and locked the door. I lay there and listened to Monica and Brielle laughing downstairs, and I understood, finally, what I was to my family. Not a daughter. A product. Headlights swept across the ceiling. Engines growled into the gravel drive. Car doors slammed. Heavy footsteps. Men's voices, low and urgent. "Welcome, sir!" Monica's voice turned sugary. "Everything's ready. She's upstairs, second door on the—oh my God!" A scream. "What is that? What's wrong with his arm? It's crawling up his neck, it's—" A thud. A grunt of pain. Something heavy hitting the floor. "Keep your eyes down and your mouth shut," a man said, very calmly. "Or I'll take both." Silence. Then footsteps on the stairs. Slow. Uneven. Like whoever was climbing them was in terrible pain. The lock clicked. The door swung open, and a tall shape filled the frame, black against the hallway light. A baseball cap pulled low. Broad shoulders. He gripped the doorframe so hard I heard the wood creak. He was breathing like a wounded animal. "Help..." I whispered. "Please... help me." He went still. "I can't even help myself," he said. His voice was rough, wrecked, and somehow the most human thing I had heard all night. He shut the door. The dark swallowed us both. I felt the mattress dip. Felt heat pouring off him like a fever. When my fingers brushed his forearm, the skin was raised and ridged, burning under my touch. He hissed. "Don't," he said. "You don't know what I am." "You're hurting," I breathed. Monica had slapped me hard when I fought the cocoa. My lip was split. I tasted copper. He must have tasted it too, when his mouth found mine. And then he stopped shaking. He made a sound against my lips. Shock. Disbelief. Relief so raw it sounded like grief. "What are you?" he whispered. I didn't know how to answer. Whatever they had poured down my throat was burning through me now, hot and dizzy and unbearable, and the only cool thing in the world was him. I pulled him closer. He caught my wrists. His breathing was ragged. "They drugged you," he said. "And I'm not in my right mind either. If we do this, I won't be able to stop." They had locked the door. They had sold me. Nobody was coming. Tonight was going to happen whether I chose it or not. So I chose it. "I know," I whispered. "Don't stop." He went still for one long heartbeat. "Are you sure?" "Yes." Outside, the sky broke open. Rain hammered the windows like it wanted to drown the whole mountain. And the dark took everything else.

Sienna POV: Gray light. Rain dripping from the eaves. The bed beside me was empty and cold. I couldn't move. I could barely keep my eyes open. Through my lashes, I saw the door open and men in black suits step inside. "Sir..." One of them sounded stunned. "Your arm. The marks are gone. They're completely gone. Dr. Grant was right. She's the one." A pause. From the doorway came a voice I recognized. Deep. Cold now. Nothing like the man who had whispered to me in the dark. "Handle it." "Yes, sir." He never looked back at the bed. I was sure of it. He never even saw my face. Footsteps left. Then a hand gripped my jaw and pried my mouth open. Something chalky dissolved on my tongue. "Morning-after pill," a man said over my head. "Fast acting. The boss can't have any complications. Make sure the family keeps their mouths shut, and the money hits their account within the hour." "Of course!" Monica gushed. "Of course, thank you, thank you so much!" The engines faded down the mountain. Then it was just them. A pointy-toed boot dug into my ribs. Once. Twice. "Mom." Brielle's voice wobbled. "She's not moving. I think... I think he killed her." A long silence. "Get the boys," Monica said. They wrapped me in the bedsheet like trash. Carried me out the back door, past the woodpile, to the edge of the ravine where the land dropped away into fog and white water. Rain stung my face. I could hear the river roaring somewhere far below. Monica crouched beside me. She smelled like Chanel No. 5 and red wine. "Don't take it personally, Sienna," she said softly. "You were always going to end up like this. You and your dead mother. Always in the way." I tried to grab her wrist. My fingers didn't even close. She stood up. "Do it." They rolled me over the edge. Branches. Rocks. Sky. Ground. Sky. Ground. Then the cold black water closed over my head, and the world went quiet. I should have died at the bottom of Black Ridge. I didn't. An old man fishing the river below found me tangled in the reeds, half-drowned and broken in three places. He carried me to his cabin. He set my bones. He sat by my bed for nine days while I burned with fever and screamed names in my sleep. His name was Eli. He never told me his last name. He had a doctor's hands, and a cabinet full of silver needles, and eyes that looked like he'd seen something he could never forgive himself for. "Who did this to you, child?" he asked, the first night I could speak. "My family," I said. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "Then we'll make you someone they can't touch." He taught me everything he knew. Sports medicine. Trauma care. Dry needling and the old acupuncture techniques he'd learned in a dozen countries. He got me into McGill in Montreal under his own sponsorship. Two months into my first semester, I threw up in the lecture hall. The morning-after pill hadn't worked. I sat in a clinic bathroom staring at two pink lines, and I almost booked the appointment to end it. I had no money. No family. No idea who the father even was. Just a burning man in the dark, and the word "Handle it." Then the ultrasound tech turned the screen toward me and said, "Oh. Oh, honey. There are two of them." Two heartbeats. Fast and stubborn, like little drums. I cried so hard the tech had to hold my hand. I kept them. Five years. Night shifts and med school. Diapers and anatomy exams. Teething and residency. I studied with a baby on each hip. I graduated top of my class. I finished a sports medicine fellowship that NHL teams fight over. Three months ago, St. Mary's Sports Medicine Institute in Boston called me. Their director had watched me put a Montreal defenseman back on the ice in eleven days, after three surgeons said his season was over. They wanted me to run their needle therapy program. Top salary. An apartment. Two preschool spots for the twins. The best sports clinic on the East Coast. Half the Boston Ironclads roster gets treated in its building. Boston. Hart Hockey. Home of Richard, Monica, and Brielle Hart. For five years, I had stayed away. I told myself I had built a new life, and the past could rot on that mountain. Then fate dropped Boston in my lap with a signing bonus. Fine. If fate wanted to drag me back, I wouldn't fight it. And nobody could blame me for what came next. Every debt would be collected. Every wound would be returned. I signed the contract that same night. The girl they threw down that ravine is dead. I came back to Boston with a medical license, a list of names, and two four-year-olds who are far more dangerous than I will ever be.

Sienna POV: "Dr. Hart, this is my third visit this week, and I just can't shake it." Mr. Pruitt leaned across my desk, his cologne arriving about three seconds before his smile did. "I can't eat. Can't sleep. Can't focus. But the minute I walk in here and see you?" He pressed a hand to his chest. "Every symptom disappears. Doc, I think I'm lovesick." I lowered my pen. "Lovesick." "Feel how fast my heart's going." He reached across the desk for my hand. I caught his wrist first. My thumb found the pressure point between the tendons. Before he could blink, three fine silver needles were in the back of his hand. "Ow! What the hell?" "Mr. Pruitt," I said sweetly, "lovesickness happens to be my specialty. Three needles, guaranteed results. Give it a second." He opened his mouth to complain. His right arm twitched. Then it jerked up on its own, swung in a wide arc, and— SMACK. He slapped himself across the face. Hard. He stared at his hand like it belonged to a stranger. "What did you do to me?" "It's an aversion technique I developed. Pain redirects the attention." I smiled. "Feeling clearer?" His face went from red to purple. "You did that on purpose!" "You came in here the first time with your pregnant wife, Mr. Pruitt." I let the smile drop. "She was on bed rest by your second visit. And you've been back three times since, trying to hold my hand. Did you think I wouldn't notice?" "I'll report you! Assaulting a patient! I'll have your license!" "The director's complaint line is posted in the hallway." I tilted my head toward the door. "But before you call, you might want to turn around." He spun. Two small children stood in my doorway. Same height. Same dark hair. Same storm-gray eyes. The boy wore an oversized Boston Ironclads jersey with a big number 19 on the back, and he was holding up an iPad. The red recording dot was blinking. "Hey, kid! Put that down!" "First of all, I'm not 'kid,'" my son said. "I'm Theo Hart." He held up a second finger. "Second, I started recording when you started smacking yourself. Mommy didn't touch you once. So what are you gonna report? That you're a self-slapper?" A third finger. "And third, I got your whole face. In 4K. Too late to hide it now, sir." Pruitt lunged for the iPad. Theo was already gone. He scrambled up the file cabinet like a squirrel and perched on top, holding the iPad high over his head. "Leave my mommy alone forever," he said, "or this goes on TikTok. You'll be famous by dinner." "You little brat, when I get my hands on you—" "You'd have to catch me first, old man." Pruitt looked at me. At Theo. At the blinking red light. He grabbed his coat and fled. I sighed. "Theo Hart. Off the cabinet. Now." He jumped down, landing in a perfect crouch, and grinned at me. My daughter hadn't moved from the doorway. Mia clutched her stuffed polar bear in both arms. She barely speaks around strangers. Some days she barely speaks at all. I knelt in front of her. "You okay, bug? Did the loud man scare you?" She shook her head and pointed at her brother. "Theo was here," she whispered. "So I wasn't scared." My heart melted into a puddle on the floor. My phone buzzed on the desk. Dr. Walsh, the clinic director. "Sienna, I need you in my office right away. A VIP patient asked for you by name. Very private, very important. Do not keep him waiting." "On my way." I told Theo to watch his sister and stepped into the hallway, rubbing my temple. I'd made it three steps when I heard it. A crash from the supply closet. Then a sound that made the hair on my arms stand up. A man. Breathing hard. Choking back a groan of pure agony. "Hello?" I stepped closer. "Are you okay in there? I'm a doctor." I pulled the door open. A hand shot out of the darkness, closed around my wrist, and yanked me inside. The door slammed. A hard body pinned me against it, and a hot palm clamped over my mouth. "Make one sound," a low voice rasped against my ear, "and we're both finished."